Then always after that Bessie Bell and the other little girls were glad
when Only-Just-Ladies came to see them.
The sun shone nearly always, or it seemed to the little girls that it
nearly always shone, out in that large garden where they could play the
hour in the sand, and where they could spend one hour eating their
cakes with their feet on the gravel, and where they could walk behind
Sister Justina on all the shell-bordered walks around the beds (but
they must not step on the beds)--just one hour. If a rain came it
always did surprise them: those little girls were always surprised when
it rained! and they did not know exactly what to do when it rained,
though they knew almost always what to do when the sun shone. One day
when it rained it happened that the little girls were all left over the
one hour in the long room where all the rows and rows of the little
arm-chairs sat, and where all the little girls learned to Count, and to
say Their Prayers, and to Tell the Time, and to sing "Angels Bright,"
and to know the A B C blocks. Sister Theckla, who always stayed the
one hour in that room, had gone to say to the Sisters that the one hour
was over, and that it was raining, and what must the little girls do
now?
While Sister Theckla was gone, all the little girls went to the
windows, and all the tiny girls looked at the rain coming down, coming
down in drops, so many drops; and so fast the drops came that they
seemed to come in long strings of drops straight from the sky.
Then one little girl laughed and began to beat on the window by which
she stood, to beat all over it as far as her little damp pink fingers
could reach, and to say:
"Rain! Rain!
Go to Spain!
Rain! Rain!
Go to Spain!
Rain! Rain!
Go to Spain!"
And all the little girls thought that was so beautiful that they began
to beat all over the windows, too, just as high and just as far as
their little damp pink fingers could reach, and to sing as loud and as
gaily as they could sing:
"Rain! Rain!
Go to Spain!"
Sister Theckla and Sister Angela came to the door of the room,--and
they were so astonished that they could only look at one another and
say to one another: "What do they mean? Where did they learn that?"
And the little girl who had taught the other little girls that much of
the song remembered some more; and so she beat louder than ever on the
window pane and said:
"Rain, rain, rain,
Go away!
And come another day!"
All the little girls laughed more than ever and sang louder than ever:
"Rain, rain, rain,
Go away!
Come again another day!"
Then Sister Angela looked at Sister Theckla and said: "Where did the
child learn that, do you suppose?"
And Sister Theckla said: "She is older than the others. She must have
learned it at home!"
And Sister Angela and Sister Theckla came into the room and they said:
"See, now, what you have done to the windows!"
Sure enough, when the little girls looked at the windows the glass was
all dim and blurred with little damp finger-prints!
* * *
* *
*
It was one day as the sun shone as it did shine most days, that the
same little girl who knew how to sing that song when it rained was
running on the shell-bordered walk, holding Bessie Bell's hand and
running, when her little foot tripped up against Bessie Bell's
foot,--and over Bessie Bell rolled on the walk with the shell border.
Then Bessie Bell cried and cried.